


Happy With That

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, References to Transphobia, Trans Female Luna Lovegood, Trans Ginny Weasley, Transitioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29078349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After she starts transitioning, Ginny learns that she's not the only transgender person at Hogwarts. At first, she's excited to have a friend who she can so closely relate to, but as she and Luna get closer, Ginny realizes that it might be more than that.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	Happy With That

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emyn ab morlan (gwenynnefydd)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenynnefydd/gifts).



Ginny Weasley had always been confident. Even once puberty had hit and she’d started feeling uncomfortable with her body, she had appeared confident to others. And it hadn’t really been a lie. In most things, she was undeniably confident. She had confidence in her Quidditch abilities. She knew she was one of the best in her year in Charms class. She could banter with the best, and she always had an opinion that she believed was worth sharing. When you were the youngest of seven kids, you learned early how to make yourself heard. There wasn’t much of a choice.

Yet, sitting in Defense Against the Dark Arts on the first day of her fifth year, she felt small. She hunched in on herself, conscious for the first time of how her height made her stand out amongst her classmates. She sat alone. Her friends had all been supportive of her decision to transition, adapting to she/her pronouns with relative ease, but none of her close friends had chosen to take Defense at NEWT-level, leaving her to deal with the curious—though thankfully not hostile—looks of her other classmates. The ones who hadn’t seen her since she’d started presenting as a girl. As much as she hated it, she couldn’t say that she was surprised that they kept looking. She still found herself staring into the mirror at times and marveling at herself too.

She could understand their curiosity despite how much she hated it. To keep herself from focusing on it too much, she fiddled with her school supplies, organizing everything neatly in front of her on the desktop and flipping through the textbook until she had an idea of the curriculum for the entire year.

Rustling to her right drew her attention from the book. She stiffened as she realized it was another student sliding in beside her. Despite her mostly positive experience so far, she was still waiting for the other shoe to drop and for someone to say something negative.

However, that wasn’t what happened. Luna Lovegood beamed at her as she dropped her bag onto the desk in front of her, what appeared to be a glittery gold Christmas bauble rolling out of it before Luna snatched it up and tossed it back inside.

“Is it alright if I sit here?” she asked in the dreamy voice that was familiar to Ginny after five years of classes together.

Ginny glanced around. There were still a number of empty seats around the room. With NEWT-level classes frequently having fewer students, no one was fighting for a place to sit. Yet there Luna was, wanting to sit next to the girl who everyone was staring at. Perhaps Ginny shouldn’t have been surprised. For years, Luna was the one people frequently gawked at during class. Maybe the Ravenclaw had gotten used to it. Maybe she was even a little jealous that someone else had taken that attention away from her. Ginny hoped not as she’d have happily given it back if she could. But Luna’s kind smile didn’t seem angry.

“Of course,” Ginny said.

It was the first time she’d used her voice since separating from her friends at breakfast, and she blushed at the way it cracked from disuse. Clearing her throat, she turned back to her book, but she couldn’t even bring herself to flip through the pages anymore. She just stared down at the page she’d landed on just before Luna appeared, very aware of Luna’s presence next to her as she took her things out of her bag.

“A lot must have changed over the summer,” Luna said offhandedly as she unscrewed the lid of her ink and placed it carefully in the corner of the desk.

Ginny raised an eyebrow. Of course things had changed for her. It was clear as day, but Luna showed nothing but innocence as she looked at her. Her eyes didn’t even hold the probing curiosity of their classmates. She had merely made an observation that didn’t require any further comment unless Ginny wanted to say something.

“Uh, yeah,” Ginny said, reaching up to tug on the long red hair that she was still getting used to. The tugging was becoming a bit of a habit, for better or worse. “It was a busy summer. That’s for sure.”

Luna’s smile widened for a moment, but she didn’t say anything else as the professor arrived. Ginny swallowed as she turned to the professor herself, determined to pay attention when all her brain really wanted to do was run through all of the events of the day so far.

* * *

Ginny did her best to focus throughout the Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, even as she was tempted to constantly glance over at Luna just to see what she was doing or if she was looking back. She still didn’t understand why the Ravenclaw had chosen to sit beside her, and she felt self-conscious of the added attention their sudden “friendship” (if that was even what it was) was giving her. She swore there were more whispers and glances in their direction than there would have been had Luna not sat beside her.

At the end of class, she headed to Potions and tried to push the strange incident from her mind, sure that it would be a one off and not a regular occurrence, but she couldn’t manage it. She and Luna had interacted several times over the years they’d been at Hogwarts, and they’d always gotten along just fine. Ginny had never been one to go along with the teasing that Luna often received from the other students, even members of her own house, but their interactions had never gone beyond simple greetings and very rare instances of small talk that lasted all of five minutes at the most. And Ginny wasn’t sure how to feel about Luna suddenly paying her attention after she had come out. Something kept poking at her brain and making her want to investigate what Luna was up to further despite another, more cautious part of her brain telling her not to go searching for answers that she might not want to hear.

Luna wasn’t hard to find once classes ended that day. She was sitting under a tree with a magazine in front of her face. The early September air was Ginny’s favourite temperature, the kind where you didn’t need a cloak as long as you didn’t mind the slight sting against your skin, and Luna seemed to be enjoying it, too, as she lounged against a tree trunk. Large radish earrings dangled from her ears, and the glasses she was wearing made her look like some kind of metallic-eyed insect. She didn’t look up from her magazine—The Quibbler, Ginny noted once she was closer— until Ginny blocked the speckles of sunlight that filtered through the leaves above her and made it more difficult for her to read.

“Oh, hi,” Luna greeted her with a smile, her voice dreamier than it had been in class even as she tilted her head back to see Ginny’s face. “How was Potions?”

“Fine,” Ginny replied, waving off the question with her hand without stopping to wonder how Luna possibly knew that Potions had been Ginny’s last lesson.

Potions wasn’t her most difficult class, but it was far from her favourite. It certainly wasn’t what she wanted to talk about at the end of the day. The new Potions professor, Slughorn, was leaps and bounds better than Snape, but that wasn’t saying much. Ginny already knew she was dropping the subject after OWLs, so she doubted she’d be doing more than the bare minimum of studying that year. With the way Slughorn had been going on and on about her brilliant charms work, Ginny wasn’t sure that she’d need to study more than the bare minimum to stay on his good side anyway.

“That’s good,” Luna said. Only she could have sounded so genuine when providing nothing more than a stock answer during an exchange of niceties.

Ginny liked it. She couldn’t stand when people behaved in ways that felt false, and she’d experienced a lot of small moments like that since coming out. In many ways, she was thankful not to have experienced any of the outright hate that she knew she could have, but there were undoubtedly times when people were being cautious around her, and it was irritating. It was as if they were scared of saying the wrong thing, so they just said less of anything at all. But Luna wasn’t playing that game. 

Feeling more drawn to her than ever, Ginny sat down a foot in front of Luna, crossing her legs beneath her. A slight breeze wafted Luna’s scent towards her, and Ginny caught the smell of something indescribable, almost as if five different sweet scents had been mingled together. Somehow, it worked; Luna was probably the only person who could have pulled it off.

“Why did you sit beside me during Defense today?” Ginny asked bluntly. If Luna was actually being genuine with her, then there was no excuse for Ginny to not be honest about her own curiosity. Perhaps they were on their way to becoming friends, and if that were the case, they needed to start off on the right foot.

Luna’s smile thankfully didn’t dim once she’d heard the question. She even seemed to have been expecting to get it. She sat The Quibbler aside on the grass and took off her ridiculous glasses, laying them on top of the magazine where they helped stop the slight breeze from rustling the pages open.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said, her wide-eyed gaze meeting Ginny’s with an unreadable expression.

It was only part of an answer, but she delivered it with the same honesty that she did everything else. She wasn’t trying to conceal why she’d wanted to talk to Ginny. In her mind, it really was that simple apparently. Ginny wished she could think of it that way too.

“But why?” she pressed instead. “We’ve been in classes together for four years, and you’ve never sat with me before. Then I come out and suddenly you’re there. I just want to know why. What do you find so interesting about me now that things between us would change?”

Luna’s smile dimmed ever so slightly, and Ginny’s stomach tightened. Perhaps she had pushed too far. Luna had been nothing but kind to her so far, but it was the first time Ginny had directly alluded to her being trans. The last thing she wanted was for that to become an opening for Luna’s entire demeanor to shift.

But, no, Luna was fiddling with the sleeve of her robes, her gaze flickering towards the ground. She didn’t appear hostile towards Ginny at all; she was only nervous. Her large blue eyes were no longer sparkling in the same way that Ginny was used to. A split second later, she drew herself as tall as she could while still sitting cross-legged in the grass and looked Ginny directly in the eyes. The change was, outwardly at least, impressive.

“I’m trans too,” she said, only the hint of a nervous waver in her voice.

It was the first time Ginny had seen any hint of insecurity from Luna Lovegood, who she had often thought of as having the kind of self-assurance that everyone should aspire to, and that unexpected change in her demeanor was surprising enough that it took a second for Ginny to even realize what Luna had actually said. When she did, she gaped at Luna like a fish, earning a short giggle from the other girl.

“Really?” Ginny asked, feeling slightly light-headed over such a wondrous confession.

Not even in her wildest dreams had she imagined that someone else at Hogwarts might have felt the same as she did. She had imagined herself being alone with her feelings, at least until she finished school. None of her countless brothers had met anyone like her in their years at the school after all. What were the odds that there would be someone else in her own year that was also trans? It should have been close to zero.

But then, maybe her brothers just hadn’t been looking for someone like her? After all, Percy was the only one of them who’d suspected a thing before Ginny told them the truth. It was safe to say that the lot of them were rather oblivious, though some more so than others.

“I transitioned when I was quite young,” Luna said, growing more confident as she continued to speak. “My mum claimed that she knew right after I was born and that I just confirmed it when I was about four. I got lucky I guess because neither of my parents ever questioned what I told them, and when my Hogwarts letter arrived, it was addressed to me as ‘Miss Luna Lovegood’ already.”

Ginny felt a pang of jealousy over that, but she pushed it aside. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted her Hogwarts letter to out her to her family when they invariably tugged it out of her hands in excitement, and she hadn’t yet named herself Ginevra at eleven anyway. She would have been more confused than anything else to see it scrawled across an envelope that should have been meant for her. The past was what it was; there was nothing to be done to change it.

What mattered was that things were finally starting to feel right. And she understood why Luna had been eager to sit beside her right after she’d come out.

“That’s great,” Ginny said far too late for the response to be natural.

Luna smiled, her head tilting to the side in a show of curiosity.

“What about your family?” she asked hesitantly. “Have they been okay about the whole thing? Your brothers seem mostly nice at least.”

Ginny smiled back, trying to reassure Luna that everything was perfectly fine.

“Yeah, it’s been better than I expected to be honest. Not that I expected… You just can’t know, you know? But it’s been good. Some of my brothers were confused at first. They didn’t understand what I was telling them, but not even that lasted long. As soon as I started presenting as a girl, Ron said things felt more right than they had used to, and I think my mum is even more ecstatic about having a girl than she’s let on to me.”

She blushed slightly in spite of herself when she glanced up at Luna and saw the soft way the other girl was smiling at her. Talking about these kinds of things was still so new that it made Ginny nervous in a way that few things were capable of making her feel.

“I’m really only worried about the other students,” Ginny continued, tossing a glance over her shoulder as if someone would appear and have something to say about it. “Especially Slytherin. They didn’t like me much before, and whenever a Slytherin gets more insult material, they’re bound to use it. It’s only a matter of time.”

Luna nodded with a sigh. One of her hands reached up to absentmindedly play with her earring. Ginny, who was staunchly against the idea of piercing her own ears, cringed at the idea of Luna tugging on her ear.

“Maybe,” she said. “But I’ve seen your Bat Bogey Hex. It would be a mistake for them to actually try anything. They wouldn’t get away with it. Everyone knows that they’d be the ones coming out the other end having embarrassed themselves.”

Ginny chuckled at the memory of the last time she’d used her signature hex. Even the punishment she’d received afterward had been worth it for the look of horror on the guy’s face when he’d realized what was happening. Ginny knew how to defend herself. The Slytherins were well aware of what she was capable of and that she wasn’t one to hold back.

“You’re right,” she said. “They’d definitely get what was coming to them if they tried anything. It’s just that I’d like to try out for Quidditch again this year, and you know that the trash talking can get a little intense, especially around game time. I know I can’t avoid that entirely.”

“You shouldn’t let that stop you,” Luna said suddenly, her voice stern in a way that Ginny hadn’t known she was capable of. It threw her off and left her scrambling for how to respond for a moment.

She was discovering that she quite liked seeing all the new sides of Luna she hadn’t known when they were nothing but acquaintances. While she had always been an interesting character, there was more to her than Ginny had ever stopped to consider. Ginny wanted to hit herself on the head for not having thought Luna Lovegood, of all people, was this fascinating before.

“You’re a talented player,” Luna continued. “The Gryffindor team is better off with you on it, and they all know it. The entire school does. And the Slytherins would love for you to quit. It would make their year.”

Ginny smirked, the familiar pride coursing through her veins.

“You’re right. I can’t give Slytherin what they want, can I?”

The two girls shared a conspiratorial smile before erupting into giggles.

* * *

Getting on the Gryffindor Quidditch team was easy, and Ginny knew that it wasn’t just because several of her brothers had paved the way before her. Honestly, having survived the try outs, she knew she shouldn’t have been surprised that she would get chosen. She was experienced, worked well with the other players, and (in all honesty) was talented with a Quaffle. It was only her anxiety that had made her think that it wouldn’t be enough to secure her spot.

The second Ron passed on the news to her over dinner, Ginny flew up the stairs towards Ravenclaw Tower, determined to share her excitement with Luna. The fact that it might be a little odd to hurry all the way to another house’s common room to do so didn’t occur to her. A few people glanced at her oddly when she passed, not used to seeing many Gryffindors in that part of the castle, but only one passerby actually stopped her: MIchael Corner. A boy who Ginny vaguely knew of but had never really spoken to prior to that moment.

Ginny was ready with excuses about just wanting to see a friend—of course she hadn’t been planning to sneak in—when Michael instead said something that was miles away from the interrogation she’d been expecting to receive.

“I was, uh...” He reached up to tug nervously at his collar as he stumbled over his words. “You see, I know this may sound like it’s coming out of nowhere, but there’s a Hogsmeade trip next weekend, and I was wondering if you wanted to go with me?”

It was out of nowhere. For years, Ginny’s classmates had seen her as a boy, and whether or not any of them would express romantic attraction to her once she was out hadn’t been at the forefront of her mind when she’d been planning to come out. There had been far too many other things to consider, and to be frank, she hadn’t cared one way or the other at the time.

Yet there a boy was, asking her out on a date not even a month into the school year, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. He stared at her as he fiddled with his sleeve, visibly worried about rejection, and she felt sympathy for him before she felt anything else. She didn’t exactly relish the idea of shooting him down.

Not once in all her years at Hogwarts had Ginny ever thought about Michael Corner in a fond way. Truthfully, she’d always found him a little annoying from what she knew about him, which she had to admit wasn’t much, yet she couldn’t shake the idea that she was supposed to feel flattered, and that was what drove her to answer.

“I’d love to.”

* * *

Ginny found Luna perched under the same tree under the grounds where they had had their first proper conversation outside of class. She had learned over the last several weeks that it was essentially Luna’s own tree. No one else sat there, and it was a good place to go if Ginny ever wanted to see the other girl. If he wasn’t in class, chances were high that she was under the tree reading The Quibbler or making one of her crafts. On that particular day she seemed to be doing something that involved feathers that she’d picked up from the floor of the owlery the night before.

“Did you even go into Hogsmeade?” Ginny asked as she lowered herself to the ground, flicking her long red hair over her shoulder.

She’d made a spur of the moment decision that morning to leave it down for her date, and she regretted it. It kept flying everywhere, including right in her eyes, and she didn’t think the look suited her enough to be worth it. She cursed herself even more for not bringing a single hair tie along with her. If she hadn’t been so eager to speak to Luna, she’d have made a trip to her dormitory before considering anything else.

“No,” Luna said, not an ounce of embarrassment in her voice over staying at Hogwarts alone like Ginny might have suspected. “I didn’t need anything, and there was no one to go with, so it was a much better use of my time to stay here. I got a lot done while everyone else was gone.”

She genuinely didn’t appear upset to have been left behind at school. It was merely a statement of fact, but that only made Ginny feel guiltier. Going to Hogsmeade with Luna wasn’t something that had crossed her mind in her excitement to finally go on a date. She had just assumed that the girl would do the same thing she had in past years. Only then did Ginny realize that she had no idea if Luna had ever gone to Hogsmeade or not. She had no idea what to say in response to Luna’s admission, but Luna didn’t appear to be waiting for anything anyway.

“How was your date?” she asked Ginny, scooping up the feathers on her lap and setting them to the side instead.

Her large blue eyes watched Ginny with their usual intensity, which only made Ginny even more uncomfortable than usual in that moment.

The truth was that she didn’t have a good answer to that question. She didn’t know how it had been, though she couldn’t explain why she didn’t know something that should have been basic information. How could she not even know whether she enjoyed herself or not? It made no sense. She was even more frustrated with herself than anyone else could be.

“It was alright,” she said with a shrug. “Michael is nice and all, but I don’t know. I just don’t know if there was anything between us. It’s kind of strange. We have a lot of the same interests, especially Quidditch. I feel like, if I were going to like a boy, I should like him, but I just don’t. Instead, the whole thing felt kind of...boring. The entire time, I kept thinking about how I’d rather be sitting across from just about anyone else but him.”

She looked at Luna as if the blonde could give her insight into her own emotions that she didn’t have herself. Luna only stared back, her face oddly blank, as if she couldn’t interpret what Ginny was saying any better than Ginny herself could.

“I don’t know,” Ginny repeated, averting her gaze and tugging a tuft of grass from the soil. “If I’m being honest, I spent most of the date trying to figure out if I actually wanted to be on the date. I don’t think that’s what you’re meant to do if things are going well.”

Luna shrugged and gave Ginny an amused grin despite the subject matter.

“I feel like that sometimes,” she said. “Not on dates. I’ve never been on one, but when the girls in my dormitory were talking about boys, I always wondered why I didn’t feel the way they did. They’d talk about the boys making them get these butterflies in their stomach or making them blush in class. They’d go on about dates they wanted to go on or how they wanted their wedding to the boys to be, but when I tried to think about doing those things with the boys, it just sounded boring.”

Ginny snorted. There was something comforting in knowing she wasn’t the only one baffled by such things. It made her feel a bit more ‘normal’, and that felt good despite how often she repeated to herself that being ‘normal’ was overrated and meaningless.

“Maybe it’ll make more sense in the morning,” she said. “After I’ve slept on it.”

Luna stared at her, a strange look on her face that Ginny couldn’t interpret. It might have been stranger if Ginny didn’t have such a hard time reading Luna most days already. As it was, she was beginning to accept that there were things about the other girl that she would just never understand.

“Maybe,” Luna finally agreed, scoping the feathers back into her lap and continuing with her craft.

* * *

Several months passed, and Ginny made no attempts to carve time into her schedule for Michael. She considered it several times, but each time, there was something else that she preferred to be doing, even if that thing was just Potions homework. And before she knew it, she wasn’t even considering whether she’d make time for him at all.

He caught on quickly, and though he pouted about it during their last conversation with each other, he moved on quickly. Ginny had noticed him in the corridors, talking to a new girl a year older who Ginny knew was the seeker on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. She was happy for him as he’d been nice enough and deserved to find someone who actually liked him back, but seeing the way they held hands and laughed together didn’t help her own confusion about how she felt.

Was it just Michael who she was disinterested in or guys in general? Back before she’d come out, she hadn’t allowed herself to even consider whether she liked boys romantically, so it was new to be actively exploring the possibility. Yet she had few answers. She had wondered if the reason she didn’t feel anything was because she had repressed it for so long. If she just let herself feel what came naturally, things would fall into place, but she was starting to suspect that her lack of feelings for boys wasn’t actually about any repression at all.

When she focused on how she felt about girls, it was a completely different feeling. It was much easier to decipher what was going through her brain. She liked spending time with girls platonically, of course, but she knew with far more certainty that she liked them romantically too. She felt it deep in her bones whenever she thought about the possibility of dates and kisses and more...

That one girl in particular kept popping up in her daydreams was a fact that she would have liked to ignore for the moment, though, as it didn’t do anything to make her feel better. It only made what usually felt so easy feel complicated instead.

One afternoon, she met Luna under their usual tree, and her heart lurched when she noticed that the blonde was upset, a frown wrinkling the skin of her brow. It was an expression that she didn’t associate with Luna, who was almost always cheerful and bright even in situations where no one would have faulted her for being moody. It was one of the many things that Ginny found endearing about her, and she had a sudden urge to do anything in her power to wipe the upset look off the Ravenclaw’s face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as she settled down, cross-legged, next to Luna.

Luna offered her an attempt at a smile, but it didn’t reach her large blue eyes. Ginny yearned to reach out and touch her in a show of comfort, but something held her back. For one thing, she wasn’t sure where to touch. A shoulder? Her back? Suddenly, anywhere she could think of felt too intimate or like the touch would somehow seep her innermost thoughts into Luna and ruin the careful distance she’d maintained. She clasped her hands in her lap instead, waiting with patience she hadn’t known that she possessed as she waited for Luna to answer the question.

“Today’s the anniversary of my mum’s death,” Luna said, the words feeling all wrong when spoken in Luna’s usual dreamy voice.

Ginny stared at her, blinking a few times before the reality of what Luna had said sunk in. Her frown deepened. They had mentioned their parents to each other before, but not once had Luna mentioned that her mum was dead. Ginny gaped at her, unsure how to respond. None of her other friends had parents who had died that she knew of, and she’d never had to deal with much grief personally.

“I’m sorry,” was what finally came out of her, but she knew that was inadequate. For one, it was an anniversary; Luna had apparently dealt with the worst of the grief. For another, how Ginny felt did nothing to erase the reality of the situation.

But Luna smiled at the simple sentiment regardless. It was a genuine expression even if it was still coloured with sadness.

“It’s okay,” she insisted. “It happened years ago. Before I started Hogwarts even. This is the only day when I think of her and feel a little sad. Usually, the memories just make me smile. It’s much nicer to think about all of the fun things we used to do together when she was alive than it is to cry about her not being here now. She was happy when she was alive, I think, so that’s what matters.”

Ginny stared at Luna, amazed as always that someone like her actually existed in the world and wasn’t a figment of Ginny’s own imagination. She’d expected some of that wonder to ease as they got to know each other. Surely, once she understood Luna better, she would be less of an enigma, but Ginny hadn’t found that. At least not yet. Luna was just as mesmerizing as she’d always been once Ginny had seen her up close.

“Do you want to do something?” Ginny asked, pushing herself up onto her knees as if she already knew where she was going. “Whenever I’m upset, I always have to distract myself by doing something. We could do anything. Usually I play Quidditch. I could teach you some tricks on a broom if you wanted.”

Luna’s smile grew amused, but she shook her head.

“I don’t think I’d be much good at Quidditch,” she said softly. “Though I suppose trying not to fall off a broom would be a good distraction from anything else.”

“It doesn’t have to be Quidditch,” Ginny added, though she admitted to herself that she quite liked the mental image she got of Luna on a broom with her long hair flowing in the wind. “Anything.”

Luna grew thoughtful, her eyes distant as she considered all possible options.

“What about visiting the thestrals?” she asked softly.

Ginny’s brow furrowed. The word was unfamiliar to her, let alone the creatures that Luna was referring to.

“Thestrals?” she asked, testing the word out for herself. “What are those?”

Luna’s eyes lit up at the knowledge that Ginny didn’t yet know them. She bounced where she sat as she rushed to speak.

“Oh, you should meet them,” she said, throwing her bag over her shoulder. “Properly, at least. You’ve encountered them before. You just didn’t know they were there.”

Ginny continued to stare at Luna’s back in confusion as the blonde led her in the direction of the Forbidden Forest, of all places. Ginny wasn’t a strict rule follower by any stretch of the imagination, but she also didn’t make it a habit of getting up to the trouble that her brother Ron and his friends often did. She’d never stepped foot in the Forbidden Forest, and she hadn’t exactly planned on changing that.

“Luna, what are you on about? And where are we going?”

Luna paused and turned to face Ginny, her smile now nothing but bright. At least Ginny’s plan to distract her seemed to have been a smashing success.

“Thestrals are winged horses. They pull the school carriages between Hogsmeade Station and the castle.”

Somehow, the more Luna spoke the more confused Ginny felt.

“The horseless carriages?” she attempted to clarify, trying to figure out where the thestrals could possibly come into that picture.

“Are not horseless,” Luna finished. “The carriages are pulled by thestrals. They’re invisible to most people. Only people who have seen death can see them, so for most students that means they’re not there at all, but that’s not actually how it works, you know? The thestrals are there plain as day whether everyone can see them or not.”

Something like ice gripped Ginny’s heart as she realized why Luna would be able to see these winged horses closely associated with death when Ginny herself had never even heard of them. It seemed odd to want to visit such a vivid reminder of your parent’s death on the anniversary of that same death, but Luna was enthusiastic as they bounded towards the forest.

Once they reached the thestrals, Ginny thought she could understand why Luna enjoyed the visit despite everything else. Though Ginny couldn’t see the animals, there was something enjoyable about their presence that she found eerily calming instead of alarming like she’d expected.

If she had stumbled into that clearing by herself, she’d never have realized she had company, but she was glad that Luna had helped her realize that that was wrong. She quite liked getting glimpses of the world through Luna’s eyes. It was a hell of a lot more interesting than the world Ginny had been looking at for a decade and a half, and she wanted to see more of it.

* * *

The early spring air had a bite to it, but it wasn’t enough to bother Ginny as she and Luna sat beneath their usual tree. It reminded her of the way the wind sometimes stung at her skin whenever she was playing Quidditch. It left her invigorated. Her hair was already coming free from the ponytail she’d quickly put it up in before leaving her dormitory that morning. The wind blew the loose strands around her face, but that was something else that she had gotten used to thanks to Quidditch. Occasionally, Ginny would reach up to brush a strand away from her eyes or mouth without thinking much of it, too consumed with other thoughts to worry about what her hair was doing.

Beside her, Luna was working on Potions homework that Ginny hadn’t even started herself. She should have. There were only two days left for her to write an entire essay, and she knew she needed the time. Most days Potions made her want to curse at the sky. She’d be up past midnight to finish the essay later. There was a chance that she wouldn’t actually finish it by the time she needed to hand it in, but in that moment, she was far too preoccupied to focus on her hair, let alone her schoolwork.

Her eyes kept flickering over to Luna, who remained completely oblivious to the attention Ginny was giving her as she scribbled away on her parchment, only pausing occasionally to reference the textbook that was open on the grass at her side. She must have been well-versed in the topic with the speed she was scribbling things down at. Her own long blonde hair was tied back with a looser ribbon than Ginny’s, yet somehow, the wind wasn’t whipping it around with the same ferocity. If there hadn’t been other distractions, Ginny might have asked her for hair styling tips.

As it was, there was something far more pressing in her mind, and it had her dwelling anxiously on several moments that had caught her attention over the last several weeks. She had been excited when she’d first introduced Luna to Neville and the two of them had seemed to hit it off. She hadn’t been prepared for just how well they would get along. It had worn at her until she couldn’t contain herself any longer.

“Do you like Neville?” she blurted out, watching Luna closely for a response.

Luna blinked at her several times, her quill, ink dripping dangerously from its tip, dangling over her essay. Ginny eyed it as if daring the ink to splatter across Luna’s hard work. It was a good distraction from the way Luna was watching her in confusion.

“Of course,” Luna said, tilting her head to the side. “He’s very nice, and you know I’ve never had many friends. It’s nice to have another one, especially someone like Neville. He’d taught me a lot about plants already.”

Ginny sighed, tempted to squeeze her hands into fists in frustration. She resisted, not wanting to be too obvious when even she herself wasn’t sure what was going on inside her own head. Logically, she knew there wasn’t much evidence that Luna or Neville liked each other as anything more than friends, but the possibility that they might continued to nag at her regardless.

“Not as friends. I mean, do you like him as more than a friend? Do you have a crush?”

Ginny received several more long blinks before Luna smiled at her. Ginny’s stomach twisted in knots. She wasn’t really sure how to interpret a response like that. She had expected something along the lines of embarrassment or even anger. Somehow, a smile was worse. The smile had anger bubbling up in her own stomach before she could contain it.

“No,” Luna said. “I definitely don’t have a crush on Neville. He’s lovely, but he’s only a friend.”

It took Ginny a few moments to process the words, distracted as she was with new resentment for Neville (which she wasn’t proud of despite finding it impossible to shake).

“Really?” she asked in disbelief. “The two of you sure have gotten cozy with each other recently. Whenever I see the two of you, you’re always together. It’s like you’re attached at the hip. I’m sure you’ve talked to him more recently than you have to me.”

Luna’s smile turned to one of contentment. She finally placed her quill and parchment to the side before beginning to fiddle with the bracelet around her wrist, which she’d described to Ginny as being made in the shape of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack’s horn several weeks earlier.

“Like I said, I do really like him as a friend. We feel a bit like kindred spirits I suppose. There are a lot of things we have in common, and I like spending time with him. He’s been helping me a lot of Herbology, and I’ve been teaching him about magical creatures, especially the ones they don’t teach at Hogwarts. He might be one of the best people I’ve ever met, but I don’t have a crush on him.”

“Why not?” Ginny snapped before immediately wanting to sew her own mouth shut to prevent herself from speaking ever again. She should have listened at least one of the times her mother had told her to stop being so hotheaded. She knew she sounded like an interrogator even though that was the least effective way to get the information that she wanted.

The answer that Luna had given her was what she had wanted: Luna didn’t have any romantic feelings whatsoever for Neville. So why was Ginny seemingly pushing so hard for that to be the case?

“Neville’s a great guy,” she tacked on, digging herself deeper in the hole she found herself in. “He’d make a good boyfriend probably.”

“He is a great guy,” Luna said slowly. “And I’m sure he’d make a great boyfriend for someone.”

She watched Ginny for a long moment, almost as if she was searching for something specific in her expression. Ginny shifted under the attention, almost wanting to flee and escape the inspection. There was something in the air that she couldn’t describe, but it made her nervous. She didn’t like not knowing what Luna was looking for.

“Neville is a really great guy,” Luna repeated, seemingly oblivious to the way Ginny’s face had begun to burn from the tips of her ears to the bottom of her chin. “But him being a great guy is part of the problem. I don’t like guys. I’m a lesbian.”

The final word jarred Ginny so much that she sucked in an audible gasp when she heard it. Her mind was screaming at her to have some kind of encouraging response to Luna’s confession or to at least avoid making the moment awkward. She knew what kind of response she wouldn’t want herself when coming out to someone, and she didn’t want to give Luna that kind of experience. But instead of listening to what Ginny wanted, all her brain could tell her body to do was gape.

“I hadn’t realized that I hadn’t told you yet,” Luna admitted, placing her half-finished essay over her lap again as if she planned to start working on it despite the sudden turn in the conversation. In reality, she just wanted to give herself something to do in that moment by moving it. Ginny’s gaze was heavy and made her feel self-conscious.

But Ginny still couldn’t force herself to look away. The new feeling in her stomach was harder to interpret than her earlier jealousy had been. She wasn’t sure that it was any better than believing that Luna had feelings for Neville, though it probably should have been. It was the closest thing she’d gotten to hope that her feelings might be returned.

“Guess it never came up,” Luna mumbled when Ginny still didn’t speak.

And Ginny desperately wanted to know why it hadn’t come up. They’d talked with each other so much about being trans, and Ginny had brought up her own conflicted feelings about Michael with Luna, revealing more to her than she had anyone else. During all of the time that they’d known each other, Ginny had just assumed that if Luna wasn’t straight, she would have already mentioned it at some point. There were a number of times when Ginny was sure it could have been brought up. Now that she knew that Luna was gay though, her brain was running a mile a minute, and she felt like she needed to lie down. She almost certainly would have if excusing herself in that moment wouldn’t have made her look like a huge asshole.

She tugged at the grass near her knee as Luna turned back to her essay. She added another paragraph to it, but her writing was much slower than it had been before, as if it was harder for her to think of what should come next as she wrote. The confusing mess of feelings in Ginny’s mind solidified into something more recognizable though no less confusing as she watched the Ravenclaw.

“How did you know you were a lesbian?” she asked with no pretext. It was blunt, but she hadn’t bothered to stop and think about if it was rude. If nothing else, it came from a place of genuine curiosity.

It was a relief to see the small smile on Luna’s lips as she looked at Ginny again. The last thing she needed was to offend one of the only people she felt like she could truly relate to. Ginny wasn’t sure what she’d have done then. Luna might have been the only person who’s feet she would grovel at to try to make amends.

“It was long and difficult,” Luna admitted. “To be honest, I don’t think I’m good enough with words to say it in a way that makes sense outside of my own brain. I know that the things I say usually confuse people, and this would probably be even more confusing for most people. For a long time, I wasn’t completely sure if I was a lesbian or not, but at some point, it felt like things finally fell into place and became a little clearer.”

Silence descended on them again. Ginny nodded along though it was hard for her to really imagine what Luna was talking about when her own thoughts felt like such a mess and didn’t seem to be getting clearer at all. Actually, that was a lie. She had moments of clarity where everything felt like it had fallen into place, just like Luna had described, but then it would fade and everything would feel confusing again. It was hard to believe she’d ever make sense of whatever was going on in her own brain despite constantly reliving every thought and feeling she’d ever experienced that might point her in the right direction.

She nearly jumped when Luna spoke again. Her own thoughts had consumed her so deeply that she’d forgotten that they were even meant to be having a conversation.

“Nothing’s the same for everyone, I don’t think. It’s something you just eventually figure out for yourself. Or if you don’t, I think that’s okay too. Nothing’s ever completely clear, is it? And we don’t really need labels. We just use them to try to make things a little clearer, but they can’t be perfect.”

Ginny shrugged in response, not trusting her voice even if she’d known what to say to that. She was inclined to agree that nothing could ever be entirely clear when her own mind was such a mess. It made her feel better to think that was the case for most people, not just herself, but she didn’t want that to be true, and agreeing felt like it would be accepting defeat when she should still be working on figuring out what exactly her orientation was.

Luna seemed to sense that it was better to leave the topic alone. She fell silent and continued with her Potions essay while Ginny picked a stray dandelion and did her best not to look at the other girl too often.

* * *

Luna approached the Burrow slowly, noting the interesting architectural choices that left it leaning to one side. It was unique in a way she quite enjoyed. She’d never seen anything like it before, and she lived in an unusual home herself. She wasn’t one for typical houses. It was far funner to walk into a space and be able to tell things about the people who lived there by your surroundings. Never before had Luna seen another house that so completely spoke to the family who lived there in an organic way that wasn’t meant to show off.

She liked it, but she was also intimidated by it. The haphazard additions of new rooms reminded her of just how many Weasleys there were. She knew most of the children at least in passing from Hogwarts, but entering their house was quite another matter entirely. Would Percy Weasley remember Luna’s first year when he’d intervened when he’d found her getting bullied? Would the twins remember when she’d stumbled upon them setting up a prank while she was searching for one of her missing shoes, and she’d adamantly agreed not to rat them out? A promise that she had more than kept.

Perhaps not, but either way, Luna felt intimidated. Not many people warmed to her, and suddenly, she was going to be surrounded by people who had opinions about who she was and how she acted even when they weren’t at Hogwarts. She liked to pretend that the attitudes of others didn’t affect her, but that was never completely true. It was merely what she wished was true and hoped to achieve by putting on false airs, and it was far easier to fake in a neutral place like Hogwarts.

Ginny was outside the door to the Burrow as Luna approached, and Luna returned her beaming smile, some of her anxiety easing with the reminder that her best friend would be with her throughout the party. The redhead threw her arms around Luna, and Luna sunk into the embrace, trying to ignore the fluttering in her stomach that came the second they touched and didn’t quite go away after they’d parted. Ginny stayed close by after pulling away, and Luna felt as if she was on some kind of high as Ginny tugged her into the house where the rest of the family was waiting.

The whole experience was overwhelming with Ginny beside her smelling earthy and a million other sights, smells, and sounds bombarding her from every corner of the Burrow at once. It was exactly what Luna had imagined the Burrow would be like, yet experiencing it firsthand was still enough to throw her for a loop. She was realizing that nothing could prepare you for the Burrow except being thrown in head first.

There were so many people speaking over each other that Luna struggled to distinguish anything that was being said. It sounded more like a loud rumble, like a thunderstorm grumbling in the distance. It was a far cry from her own home where she could hear her father talking to himself no matter where she was in the house. Smells of food wafted through the air, making Luna’s mouth water. Of all of her overloaded senses, that was her favorite one.

Molly Weasley turned to look at them as they entered the kitchen from outside.

“Hello, dear,” she greeted, sounding friendly and non-judgemental enough for Luna to feel a little bit more at ease. However, her cooking was clearly the focus of her attention, and she turned back to her frying pan before she could say anything more. The look of concentration on her face kept Luna from so much as responding to the hello.

Ginny pushed passed her into a sitting room where most of the family, and even friends like Harry and Hermione, sat in front of the fireplace. There was a game of Exploding Snap and one of Wizard’s Chess happening at the same time on opposite sides of the room, and the cheers and boos surrounding both games echoed through the air. Luna scarcely knew where to look. Not even the Ravenclaw Common Room had ever felt as animated, and she wondered briefly how any of the Gryffindor students survived and were able to graduate.

The overbearing sound was at least partially because of the cramped space. Everyone was packed together tightly, and it was impossible to focus on one game without hearing everything of the other. It left Luna feeling dizzy in a way that might have been positive, though she’d need time to decide.

“Luna’s here,” Ginny announced loudly, somehow managing to get everyone’s attention above the noise.

Luna smiled and offered a slight wave of her hand as everyone turned to look at her. Somehow, the commotion momentarily dulled, but it never went away completely. Both games continued even as various family members shouted greetings. There were just so many people that everyone kept doing what they were doing as others took their turns saying hello. Luna was thankful when it was over and the noise had returned to its original level.

As if sensing how Luna felt, Ginny guided her towards the only free space on the sofa with a gentle hand. Luna swallowed and tried to pretend that the warmth in her cheeks was from the fire and not where Ginny was touching her back. She focused her attention on the Exploding Snap game happening right in front of her, willing to—for the moment—be little more than a fly on the wall while she got her bearings.

* * *

A light breeze was enough to make Luna shiver and pull her cloak tighter around her. It was the very beginning of spring. Small green buds had just started to appear on the tips of the trees where full formed leaves would soon be. After that would come the flowers, which signalled Luna’s absolute favourite time of the year.

She turned to Ginny, who seemed unperturbed by the wind chill as she scribbled away with her quill, though the tip of her nose was bright red. Luna got a little lost as she stared at her, mesmerized by the sunlight reflecting off her red hair. It was something she’d almost gotten used to, especially in the months since Christmas when she’d felt something shift between them.

The Weasleys had all been welcoming and kind. There had been some lighthearted teasing from some of the boys, particularly Ron and the twins, but it hadn’t carried the edge that Luna was used to when her classmates teased her. Instead, she had felt like she was supposed to laugh along to, and that had actually been easy to do. She had felt like she’d belonged at the Burrow, and that had only cemented her feelings for Ginny into something she couldn’t ignore.

But though seemingly all of her spare time was taken up with thinking of her feelings these days, she had yet to voice them out loud, too worried about how Ginny would react when she learned of them. The Gryffindor hadn’t been on any dates since the one with Michael Corner that hadn’t resulted in much of anything, and she hadn’t said a single thing about anyone she may or may not have liked since then either. Luna couldn’t say with certainty if Ginny even liked girls, let alone Luna. All Luna had to go on was a feeling that she got sometimes, one that she had to hope wasn’t just wishful thinking getting the better of her.

There was only one way to find out once and for all, and she’d been building herself up to actually confess for several weeks before the day came that she was set to do it.

“Ginny,” she said, capturing the other girl’s attention with a shaky voice. “Can I talk to you about something?”

Ginny grinned and wiped off the tip of her quill before stowing it away, apparently sensing that Luna intended for this to be a longer conversation. Luna was thankful despite the increase in her anxiety as she waited for Ginny to finish with the task.

“Of course. What do you want to talk about?” Ginny asked

She leaned back, tossing her long red hair back over her shoulder with a flick of her head. Luna swallowed, willing the courage she’d felt just that morning to return to her and get her through the moment. She wasn’t really sure why confessing scared her so much. The worst that could happen was a gentle rejection that she could recover from. She knew Ginny well enough not to expect anything worse than that. She would be understanding if nothing else, and that was more than Luna typically expected from her classmates. Luna held onto that as she spoke.

“I like you a lot,” she said. “As more than just a friend that is. If I’m being completely honest with myself, I liked you way back at the start of the year when I first sat down next to you in Defense, but I wasn’t sure how to tell you that. I didn’t even know if you liked girls, and it seemed like you needed a friend more than anything. You were already going through so much right then, so I decided I’d keep my feelings to myself. But it’s been ages, and I feel like you deserve to know, I guess? I don’t want it to seem like I’m lying to you or hiding anything, so there’s the truth: I like you.”

Ginny stared at Luna with wide eyes, but her expression was largely unreadable. Luna fiddled with one of her long, dangling unicorn horn earrings just to give herself something to do that wasn't staring back and taking deep breaths. It felt like time stretched on indefinitely as she waited for some kind of further reaction from the other girl. Eventually, after much mental deliberation, Ginny spoke, and just hearing words from the other girl’s mouth was enough to help Luna breathe again.

“I like you too,” Ginny said, making Luna’s heart race. “And I have for a while too. It’s just… I was confused, I guess. Remember how I told you before that I never thought much about who I like? Well, that was true. I wasn’t sure if I liked girls or not, so at first I couldn’t tell if I liked you or if I was more envious of you. I mean, you transitioned so much earlier than me and all of that. What if I wanted to be you more than anything, you know? I didn’t want to misinterpret anything.”

She paused as if giving Luna a chance to speak, but Luna only stared at her, wanting to hear every single word that Ginny had to describe what she was thinking in that moment. Ginny seemed to sense that she wasn’t going to speak and continued on her own.

“But I went on that date with Michael, and it was less than perfect. At first, it just made me more confused, but I’ve pretty much accepted at this point that boys aren’t for me. I’m just not interested, and girls seem a whole lot more interesting. You… I like you a lot, Luna. And I don’t think it’s just me being envious of you either. I just genuinely like you. You’re fun to be around. You’re so much cooler than most of our stupid classmates will acknowledge. How could I not like you?”

Feeling overwhelmed, Luna laughed, and Ginny joined in with her seconds later. They both fell down in the grass, not paying any attention to the grass stains on their black robes. Simple spells could take care of that later.

It felt like ages once more before they could stop laughing. Luna felt lighter than she had in ages now that everything was off her chest. She paused, her gaze finding Ginny again. She took in the image of the other girl with an even greater intensity than she ever had before. It felt like she was finally fully allowed to stare without disguising her intent, and she drunk in the other girl was much as she possibly could.

Still, she felt slightly hesitant to make another move. Everything felt strangely fragile between them in a way she hadn’t quite expected after a joint confession. Despite that, she knew she had to do something.

“Will you go to Hogsmeade with me next week?” she asked breathlessly.

Ginny giggled at the suggestion, a sound Luna had never heard from her and one that only made her feel lighter.

“Of course,” Ginny said, reaching out to find Luna’s hand with her own.

They twined their fingers together and squeezed tightly, both still trying to process that the other was their and real and that everything between them was actually happening.

“It’s a little stereotypical,” Ginny hastened to add, her voice joking. “But I’m up for being stereotypical with you. We’ll blow everyone else out of the water.”

Luna laughed, though she already knew they would be the farthest thing from stereotypical together, Hogsmeade or no Hogsmeade.

And she was quite happy with that.


End file.
